Dear JCHS School Community,
Thankfully in the week since we circulated the first packet of resources there is now a ceasefire in Gaza and Israel.
But several important issues and feelings remain.
I addressed some of these at the November 26 Hakhel (schoolwide community gathering each Monday). I want to share those thoughts with you and some additional resources.
It is crucial that we speak with each other honestly and respectfully -- and that we listen to each other openly and compassionately -- if we hope to have vital conversations about Israel.
To help us do that, let me share a reminder about the goals of Israel learning at JCHS, some context from this week's Torah portion, and a glimpse at one public, sharp, and charged debate that has been trending online in recent days.
JCHS Goals for Israel Education
As a Jewish educator my starting point is (often) Torah. But before turning to this week's Torahportion, I want to be explicit about what JCHS wishes for its students in this arena -- that all students develop their own, unique and engaged relationship with Israel. For some that may manifest itself in aligning with secular Zionists or with religious Zionists, for others it could mean aligning oneself with progressives or with their opponents. An engaged relationship is the big goal -- but the flavor of that relationship depends on the unique vision of each student.
As expressed in our school's explicit goals for Israel education, we want JCHS students to learn and experience the extent to which:
· Israel plays a central role for the Jewish people providing both religious and cultural inspiration for Jewish identity and practice.
· The future of the Jewish people depends on the reciprocal relationships between Jews in Israel and the Diaspora.
· Developing a sense of personal responsibility for klal yisrael (Jewish peoplehood) both affirms and cultivates responsibility for all humanity.
· The Jewish democratic state of Israel is a pluralistic and complex society that is enriched by the ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity of its citizens.
· From the very beginning, Judaism has been built on a dynamic relationship between landedness and portability.
Reflections Based on the Week's Torah Portion -- Vayishlach
The parsha this week begins with Jacob and Esau preparing for a reunion after more than two decades of alienation from each other. When they last saw each other, Esau promised to exact revenge against his brother for stealing their father's blessing. Naturally, Jacob is concerned about a reunion on those terms and sends messengers to scout Esau's intentions. When the messengers report that Esau is preparing for the reunion with four hundred soldiers, Jacob is frightened.
Indeed, the Torah narrative tells us "Jacob was really frightened and he was distressed." (Bereisheet 32:8). Why both emotions? Wasn't it enough to be afraid!?! What does it also mean that Jacob was distressed too?
According to the ancient rabbis, Jacob's feelings of discomfort are doubled because Jacob wasafraid for himself - that he and his family might be killed - and Jacob was distressed for Esau -- that in defending himself from Esau, Jacob would bring harm to Esau or his family. (Bereisheet Rabbah 76:2)
With these conflicting anxieties weighing on him, Jacob begins to prepare for the reunion in three different ways: (1) Getting ready for battle, (2) Praying, and (3) Preparing generous gifts of tribute for Esau (presumably, hoping to appease Esau). The rabbis puzzle over why Jacob feels compelled to do all three -- after all, isn't prayer sufficient for one as righteous as Jacob? One commentator, Samson Raphael Hirsch suggests that Jacob did not leave matters to mere prayer because Jacob acknowledged an aspect of justice in Esau's grievance. (Hirsch Commentary on Bereisheet 32:8.) Presumably while Jacob's military plans were motivated by his moral obligation to protect his family, Jacob's plans to pay tribute were motivated by his moral obligation to act with justice toward Esau.
This, it seems to me, is a genius aspect of Judaism -- we learn how to simultaneously hold (otherwise) conflicting sentiments in our minds. The world is a mysterious place without absolutes. Jacob is torn by fear over needing to defend himself on the one hand and upset over the likely consequences for his brother's family if he defends himself on the other. Similarly, Jacob prepares different ranges of response because he knows that the situation is not a clear one.
So, too, in Gaza. It is possible to know that Israel has every right to defend itself on the one hand - and to weep over the deaths of innocents caused by Israel defending itself on the other.
Earlier this week, Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, was in San Francisco and Berkeley. He commented last night that he weeps -- and he believes every Jew should weep -- over the deaths and injuries in Israel and Gaza.
Writing about this parshah several years ago, Rabbi Sacks observed: "There may be situations in which doing the right thing is not the end of the matter. The conflict may be inherently tragic. The fact that one principle (self-defence) overrides another (the prohibition against killing) does not mean that, faced with such a choice, I am without qualms. Sometimes being moral means that I experience distress at having to make such a choice. Doing the right thing may mean that I do not feel remorse or guilt, but I still feel regret or grief that I had to do what I did." [Read More]
Sacks referred back to a 1967 speech by Yizhak Rabin, the decorated Israeli Chief of Staff, after the successful conclusion of the Six-Day War. Rabin said: "We find more and more a strange phenomenon among our fighters. Their joy is incomplete, and more than a small portion of sorrow and shock prevails in their festivities, and there are those who abstain from celebration. The warriors in the front lines saw with their own eyes not only the glory of victory but the price of victory: their comrades who fell beside them bleeding, and I know that even the terrible price which our enemies paid touched the hearts of many of our [soldiers]. It may be that the Jewish people has never learned or accustomed itself to feel the triumph of conquest and victory, and therefore we receive it with mixed feelings."
That is the lesson of Vayishlach -- the world is a place of mixed blessings and we receive it with mixed feeling. The moral life is one that appreciates this, in Rabbi Sacks' words, "tragic complexity -- of feeling distress even in victory." May we be wise enough to see that complexity and strong enough to balance it in ways that bring more compassion, blessing, and peace to a shattered world.
Finally, among the materials I circulated last week, the blog exchange between Rabbi Daniel Gordis and Rabbi Sharon Brous has generated unusually high interest. Their exchange reveals a sharp divide -- a divide that I believe can only be bridged if we learn to listen with as much passion and compassion as we exercise in our speech.
L'Shalom -- Toward Wholeness,
Rabbi Howard Ruben
Brous #1] "Heartache" by Sharon Brous (November 16, 2012): I believe that the Israeli people, who have for years endured rocket attacks targeting innocents and designed to create terror, instability and havoc, have the right and the obligation to defend themselves. I also believe that the Palestinian people, both in Gaza and the West Bank, have suffered terribly and deserve to live full and dignified lives. And I happen to agree with the editors of the New York Times that the best way for Israel to diminish the potency of Hamas is to engage earnestly and immediately in peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. . . . We are deeply entrenched in our narratives of good and evil, victim and perpetrator - and we are scared. Over one million Israelis slept in bomb shelters last night and rockets nearly reached Tel Aviv. So it's tempting to dig in our heels, to diminish the loss on the other side of the border, even to gloat. This is not the Jewish way. However you feel about the wisdom and timing of Israel's response to the Hamas threat, the people of Israel need our strong support and solidarity. At the same time, supporting Israel's right to protect and defend itself does not diminish the reality that the Palestinian people are also children of God, whose suffering is real and undeniable. [Read More]
Gordis #1] "When Balance Becomes Betrayal" by Daniel Gordis (November 18, 2012): Of course Israel is far from perfect, and yes, much of life in Gaza is miserable. Yet why can we not actually say what we know to be true? Why cannot a leader of the American Jewish community say that the only reason that Israel and Hamas are at war is that Hamas wants to destroy Israel? Does anyone really imagine that even a return to the 1967 borders would mollify Hamas? How do I know that it would not? Because they say so. They say that they will never end the "armed resistance" until the "Zionist entity" is utterly eradicated. Why don't we believe them? Why this paternalistic, virtually racist, "oh they couldn't possible mean that - it must be a cultural difference in how we express ourselves"? The "we're all entrenched in our narratives of good and evil" worldview leaves no space for calling evil what it is. Why can we not simply say that at this moment, Israel's enemies are evil? That they're wrong? [Read More]
Brous #2] "Lowering the Bar" by Sharon Brous (November 19, 2012): Rabbi Danny Gordis brought the discourse on Israel to a new low this week. In a missive against me in the Times of Israel, Gordis, a former teacher and friend, a person for whom I have for years had deep affection and respect, accuses me of betrayal against both the State of Israel and his family. One might wonder what treasonous words one needs to utter these days to provoke such a serious accusation. Here's what I did not say: I did not challenge Israel's right to respond to Hamas rockets; on the contrary I said that Israel had not only a right but an obligation to defend its people. Nor did I suggest a moral equivalency between Hamas operatives targeting Jewish civilians and Israeli soldiers targeting Hamas operatives but inadvertently hitting Palestinian civilians. My act of betrayal: the fairly unremarkable call to those who care deeply about Israel and bear witness to the fighting from across the Ocean to remember as the battle intensifies that war is never to be celebrated and that loss of human life is tragic. [Read More]
"All the Families of the Earth" by Ed Feinstein (November 23, 2012): The primary task of Zionism, as Gordis so well understands, was to make a safe place for Jews and Jewish life. But that was never its sole purpose. Zionism was always an expression of Jewish moral aspiration. The best exponent of this impulse is Gordis' former Shalem Center colleague, now Israel's ambassador, Michael Oren. Every time Oren was interviewed on CNN this past week, he carefully detailed the painstaking efforts taken by Israel's military to avoid harming Palestinian civilians. Given just a few precious moments of the world's media attention, Oren talked of the text messages, phone calls and leaflets dropped into Gaza neighborhoods warning of impending attacks and guiding Palestinian families toward safe havens. This, he argues persuasively, is what distinguishes a democracy from a regime of terror. This is what keeps us from becoming them. This is what makes Israel a Jewish state. And this, despite himself, is why Rabbi Gordis needs Rabbi Brous. [Read More]
Gordis #2] "A Responsibility to Speak" by Daniel Gordis (November 26, 2012): The Jewish community has always been a passionate, argumentative one. . . . This debate now unfolding in The Times of Israelis no different. What is at stake is yet another issue on which the Jewish future may hinge - the question of the degree to which Jews owe allegiance to Jews first, and then, secondarily, to a universal ethic. . . . But too often, Progressive Judaism's moral sensitivity is devolving into a pallid universalism that actually silences the classic Jewish voice which says that when it comes to our love and our devotion, the members of our community come first (Bava Metzi'a 71a). It's not because other people don't need us. Rather, there's a more substantive view at the heart of that Talmudic claim: We learn caring, and we learn love, from our innermost circles. To love all of humanity equally is ultimately to love no one. Devotion and loyalty demand priority and specificity. Sans such specificity, we ultimately stand for nothing. [Read More]
"Jewish Education Caught in the Crossfire of a Most Uncivil War" by Sivan Zakai (November 27, 2012): Many of today's American Jewish youth and, increasingly, the educators who are most qualified to teach them about Israel, are opting out of the conversation. This new reality should give pause to all those who care about the State of Israel and the future of its relationship with American Jews. For today's youth are tomorrow's leaders, and if they are unwilling to discuss Israel - or unable to because those tasked with educating them have avoided the topic - then there can be no lasting relationship between American Jews and Israel. Creating a more civil discourse among Jewish adults would go a long way towards preventing further collateral damage. [Read More]
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